Friesville Bridge Reopens in Greenfield

A ribbon-cutting ceremony hosted by the Blair County commissioners was held Oct. 14 to recognize the reopening of the Blair County-owned Friesville Bridge in Greenfield Township.

Greenfield Township supervisors were on hand with county officials to celebrate the bridge's reopening.

The primary purpose of this project for Blair County Bridge No. 10 (also known as Friesville Bridge) was to replace the formerly structurally deficient bridge carrying Evergreen Road over South Poplar Run, with a new, safer structure.

This $740,000 project involved a complete structure replacement of the former bridge. The new bridge is a two-lane, single-span, prestressed concrete spread box beam superstructure with a span of 54 feet. The bridge substructure consists of reinforced concrete footings and abutments founded on bedrock. The project also included reconstruction of the approach roadway on each side of the bridge for a total length of 375 feet, new guiderail, drainage system, and upgrades to the existing storm sewer system.

Replacement of the structurally deficient bridge was 95 percent funded by the PennDOT Transportation Improvement Plan with 80 percent of the funds coming from federal dollars and 15 percent coming from state dollars. The remaining 5 percent of project funding was locally administered transportation funding.

Keller Engineers Inc., Hollidaysburg, was the project's engineer. Wen-Brooke Contracting Inc., Three Springs, was the contractor.